Adiba Nelson

My job is to make you feel — whether it’s lust, pride, anger, guilt, joy, sadness — whatever it is you feel, I want you to feel it.

So, by your reasoning, it’s safe to say that we should go into areas where one group of people are thought to be terrorizing another group of people, round up the terrorizers, and get them off the streets. OK, cool. I see your proposal, and I raise you “history."

It is made up of women that I've known since I was 8, and women I met last week.

I’m about to bring you some pint-sized deliciousness, and a whole lot of fierce! Meet Ify Ufele, or just Ify if you’re cool like that.

"I will peer relentlessly into every cop car I pass with a young black man in it, stretching my neck to make sure that it’s not my son who’s been arrested for driving while black, walking while black, or breathing while black. I will hold my breath while listening to every news report of another black man that has been arrested, beaten, killed, and made an example of."

Then we had that talk that made my eye twitch: the budget talk.

They basically gave the Oscars the middle finger.

This was how my eating disorder began. This is when I first consciously ate my emotions. THIS is when I said, “I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need to love myself. I don’t need to feel or be felt. Hear or be heard. See or be seen. I just need to eat. I just need to eat because food will never judge me. Food will never leave me (unless I make it leave me, which I did. In college. A LOT.).

"...do you know what happens in lightly buzzed stupors? You get brave. Really brave. So, I signed up for it. In my lightly buzzed stupor I signed up for the burlesque mentorship program.

Black women were branded as sexually promiscuous and immoral, which in turn was used as justification for sexual trauma/rape.